Der Blogger

"Enough is enough!" "This can't go on!" "This has to stop!" These were among the comments that came through the blizzard of commentary after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County. We have heard these words before.

Wanderlust

As a travel destination, Germany has never been more popular. With tourist numbers forecast to rise for an eighth consecutive year, what is the country doing right to account for its thriving visitor numbers?

Akademia

For education experts, English language lessons have proven valuable in primary schools in North Rhine-Westphalia. But the Alternative for Germany’s state parliamentary group in NRW have a rather different view.

Essen & Trinken

Police in the city of Osnabrück had to clear crowds in front of a new döner kebab shop on Tuesday, after about 150 hungry people packed the street outside, eager to get their hands on a döner for only €0.01.

Germericana

Many Americans have German ancestors — and that's also the case for actress Meghan Markle, who will be marrying Prince Harry, himself a descendant of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a German dynasty.

New poll shows Merkel back in the drivers seat

For the first time since the December DeutschlandTrend survey was released, the German chancellor led her main challenger, Martin Schulz, in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup.

Schulz, the candidate for the CDU’s junior coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), had pulled even with Merkel by January’s poll and in February opened a 16-point (50 percent to 34 percent) lead over the chancellor.

That dipped to 45 percent to 36 percent by March, but Merkel, the devil Germans know best, gained 10 points in the most recent DeutschlandTrend survey, giving her 46 percent hypothetical support.

A former bookseller from the western city of Aachen who has spent most of his political career in the European Parliament, including five years as its president, Schulz dropped six points in the most recent survey, leaving him at 40 percent.

Surveying 1,002 Germans, the pollster Infratest dimap found that Schulz had lost four points when it came to overall satisfaction, leaving him at just 48 percent, with Merkel up two points, to 62 percent.

The country’s least satisfying politician is Frauke Petry, the de facto leader of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), who received just 9 percent support – down a point from March.

Four more years?

Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian partner, the Christian Social Union, also lead ahead of September’s Bundestag elections, with the right-wing bloc up two points, to 34 percent support, while the SPD held even at 31 percent.

Also steady were the AfD, with 11 percent support, the Greens (8 percent) and Germany’s laissez-faire Free Democrats (FDP), with 6 percent. The Left lost a point and now has 7 percent support.

DeutschlandTrend found Germans relatively OK with things the way they are, with 51 percent indicating that they were satisfied with the government they’ve got, up nine points from March, and another 2 percent saying they were very satisfied.

Thirty-four percent of respondents said they weren’t so satisfied, however – down nine points from March – and 13 percent said they weren’t satisfied at all. By party, that broke down to broad satisfaction for CDU supporters (73 percent), enthusiastic satisfaction for Greens (60 percent) and resigned satisfaction for SPD members (51 percent). AfD supporters were the least satisfied people in Germany, with 98 percent responding negatively to the notion.

Kultur

The German term "Heimat," often translated as "homeland," was long thought of as tacky, regressive, and even politically dubious. But since the election, German politicians across the spectrum are using it once again.

Das Kino

This month's Berlin film festival, Europe's first major cinema showcase in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, will shine a light on sexual misconduct in the industry, its director said on Tuesday.

Gesundheit

In the run-up to international World Cancer Day on Sunday, experts have said that about half of all cancer cases in Germany could be prevented by a healthier lifestyle. Across the country, around 500,000 people are diagnosed with cancer each year. But experts say things like exercise could cut this figure in half. “Movement can […]